CHADRON, Neb. — Several days after Sheri Peders, of Bloomington, Minnesota, lost her mother to cancer, she discovered her mare had been hurt. Anyone who’s experienced grief knows what she did then. “I completely broke down and stood in the
CHADRON, Neb. — Several days after Sheri Peders, of Bloomington, Minnesota, lost her mother to cancer, she discovered her mare had been hurt. Anyone who’s experienced grief knows what she did then. “I completely broke down and stood in the field, sobbing,” says Peders. But then something unexpected happened. Two mares in the pasture that were not hers, both with reputations for being ill-tempered, “came over and put their foreheads on my chest and just ‘held’ me until I stopped crying.”
Women say Peders’ story tells you something about horses. Men say it tells you about women instead.
“We were surprised at how big an issue this has turned out to be,” says Jo Belasco. She heads The Voice of the Horse Project, a major two-year research effort of Tapestry Institute, a non-profit organization located in Nebraska. “It’s common knowledge now that there are more women riding than men, for instance, and more women at riding clinics and horse shows. And of course everyone knows that lots of little girls love horses. But when we were telling agricultural broadcasters about our program the pattern got really noticeable.
Sooner or later, every one of them who was a woman would ask us, ‘What is it about horses?’ Meaning, what made them so unique in behaving like this, like they did with Sheri. But the men broadcasters would ask, ‘What is it about women and horses?’ It was like men were outside of whatever was going on, whereas women weren’t.”
Some men, like cowboy singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey of “Wildfire” fame, see the difference as a good thing. “Women have a special way with horses,”
But other men, like one who tested a research survey for a different phase of The Voice of the Horse earlier this year, see the issue more cynically. After reading the list of questions asking a person to describe ways in which a horse might have healed or taught them, for instance, the volunteer observed, “I hope you realize this is a survey that only women will take. And the online conference is something only women will go to.”
He was almost right. Of the more than 1200 people who responded to the survey, 95% were women. And about the same gender proportion is present in both presenters and participants at The Voice of the Horse online conference. The question is: why?
The question, says Belasco, is this: Do horses really relate to women differently from the way they relate to men? Or do women and women simply perceive what’s going on differently? For a study about the nature of the horse-human relationship, it’s a crucial distinction.
A third alternative, of course, is that men simply might not know about the on-going study and so haven’t come forward to contribute their stories. “Until more men tell us about their experiences with horses,” says Adams. “We can’t tell what’s going on with horses. We have to be able to rule out the gender of the person telling the story as a key factor.”
Tapestry has extended the online conference portion of the study so men — or women who know men’s stories —or women who want to add their own stories to make sure their voices are still heard if men join in — can participate.
“We made a special effort to include a low-bandwidth option so people in the smaller communities of states like Hawai’i can take part without getting frustrated,” adds Belasco. “Because it’s the people in small communities all over the country whose experiences create the core of this research.
Marj Kittredge founded the field of therapeutic riding in 1964 and the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association not long afterward. The daughter of an old-school military officer, who learned to ride on cavalry horses in her father’s unit, Kittredge is direct and pragmatic. But when she told the story of how she came to start therapeutic riding, the same themes emerged. “The medical world thought we were absolutely nuts.
But after NARHA’s forty years of success at hundreds of facilities, treating tens of thousands of people, the doctors are no longer laughing in ridicule. Even the Army is using horses to help heal returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But Kittredge makes it crystal-clear that there’s more to the story than that. In the same online presentation she explains that they’ve been pleased by the thoroughbreds they use at her own farm even though many people are surprised to find that such “hot-blooded” horses are used for children and the physically disabled.
“I had a mare and raised four thoroughbreds, and they’re all in the program. And I’ll watch this one horse in particular who will feel somebody get a little off balance, and he comes right under them.” It’s a statement that recalls Peders’ encounter with the comforting mares and the notion that at least some horses are doing something special and intentional to care for at least some human beings.
If so, if horses really are relating to humans this way, what does it mean that primarily women are the ones having the encounters? “That’s what we’d like to find out,” says Belasco. “It could be that women are more interested in engaging with issues of relationship than men are. Certainly some studies have suggested that’s possible. And if so, then men might be having the same kinds of experiences but simply not seeing them as a big deal or worth talking about.
The phenomenal success of a pair of older horsemen who ran clinics for cowboys and other hard-as-nails horsemen certainly suggests men “want to hear it” if it’s there. Brothers Bill and Tom Dorrance emphasized a concept called “feel.” The term has become widely used in horse circles, although it’s never been clearly defined. The reason, say adherents who profess to understand it, is that it’s not a mental construct and so can’t be articulated; it’s a feel. And “feel” was certainly something a lot of men forked over a lot of money to learn about in Dorrance clinics over a number of years. They bought in because they found it made them better horsemen and made their horses better horses.
But there’s a large group of horsepeople, many of them women, who don’t want to talk about a possible difference at all. Some feel concern that any difference between men and women that might turn up will be used to denigrate one gender or the other — men as insensitive or women as irrational — at a time when the culture doesn’t need more divisiveness. Others worry that if being a good horseperson suddenly involves “being like a girl”, that men will no longer participate and the industry will suffer as a whole.
To tell their stories, men —or women who know men’s stories —or women who want to add their own stories to make sure their voices are still heard if men join in —can register online at www.thevoiceofthehorse.com. Because it costs money to carry out the 2-year research project it’s all part of, there is a fee for registration although need-based scholarships are available.
Will men care enough to participate that way, to support this kind of research into the nature of the horse-human relationship? “I don’t know,” says Belasco. “But it will be interesting to find out. And it will make a lot of difference in what the stories mean in the final analysis.”
Tapestry is located in the northwest Nebraska panhandle. The 501(c)3 organization works to restore and re-value the range of ways that humans know, learn about, and respond to the natural world. It does this through research that documents ways of knowing traditional to Indigenous cultures worldwide, and by developing educational workshops, conferences, and materials that give people the opportunity to experience these ways of knowing and learning first-hand. Tapestry also participates in the worldwide effort to preserve the body of knowledge and practice known as Indigenous Science with national and international partners. For more information, contact Dawn Adams (dawnadams@tapestryinstitute.org; 308-668-2198) or visit www.tapestryinstitute.org.
• This is a condensed version of the original article from the Tapestry Institute. Visit the Web site for the full story and additional information on The Voice of the Horse Project.
